Hunting Season
by lordranman
Summary: Our ego ridden hunter finds themselves on a quest for the Paleblood that almost every hunter searches for. The plague gets to everyone eventually, unless a cure can be discovered and the hunts can end. Armed with a rapier and a pistol, the fresh blood haphazardly leaps into the fray hoping to end the chaos. (Authors Note: feel free to criticize, comment, etc Anything is accepted.)
1. Chapter 1

**_Act I_**

What is a hunt you may ask? Oh, 'tis but a common occurrence in our fair city of Yharnam. Men become beasts, try to kill each other, and so forth. It's a truly tiring phenomenon and I for one am not particularly fond of such a disease. I'm not affiliated with any of the main packs of hunters around these parts, I am an independent hunter, if you will. The Healing Church is just too focused on healing for me. You may also ask what a hunter is. A hunter is but a mere man, armed with blade in one hand and firearm in the other. Nothing special, just a person who kills people. I'm not from around these parts, so the locals get a bit antsy when I walk near their homes.

You see, Yharnamites love blood. Blood-this! Blood-that! Always with their goddamn blood. That's why everyone thinks they're crazy, because they go around drinking blood all the time. What a bunch of filthy degenerates. Unfortunately, I caught the plague some time ago, now I have to kill beasts alongside these disgusting villagers in order to cleanse my blood of their filth.

"Vile plague-spreader.", I mutter as the poor, diseased fool's head rolls down the cobblestone street. I brush as much of the horrific spray of viscera off my clothes as possible. Some of it is caked on in big dry splotches. What a foul sight. The decapitated head thuds as it rolls into the gutter. My nice new leather coat and steel breastplate are all muddled up now.

"It's fucking Yharnam, I should have expected blood.", I say to myself, or at the head. Who knows? I've gone insane at some point, but it's been such a long time that I forgot when. I barely remember what my wife's face looks like. At least she made me this trick-weapon to remember her by. I could never remember the weapon's name. Adalheidis was carved into the grip of the blade. The edge was a bit long for a rapier, but that meant extra stabbing distance. It could even be used as an improvised shortsword. The fun part happens, though, when you sheathe and unsheathe it.

The Adalheidis is quite the weapon when used appropriately. You see the sheath of the blade had heating coils built into it. I could sheathe my weapon and unsheathe for a rapier that chars flesh on contact. I could also lock my sheath to the blade itself, and turn it into a handy, and super-heated, mace. Good for crushing skulls and burning some garbage.

Ca-chunk. I lock the heated coils to rapier blade and get ready for the fight ahead of me. A group of a dozen or so Yharnamites charge towards me, probably because I killed their friend. Some of them have shields, some pitchforks, some cutlasses. This battle will have to take strategy and precision. I listen to the heated coils crackle and fizz in anticipation of the skirmish ahead. I stand still and watch the approaching wave of scum grow ever closer.

The wretched half-man half-beasts rush towards me in an uncoordinated, child-like fashion. A quick pound of the mace easily snaps one shield and crepitates against the soft flesh. A black burn mark stains the slender arms of the man. He clutches his arm, shocked at the new mark on his skin. One quick slap of my mace to the skull snaps his neck and kills him instantly. "Hah, what a pathet-"

I feel a pain in my side. My ego got a hold of my again and weighed me down during battle. The creature had penetrated a weak point in the rift between my breastplate and backplate. I could feel the wound gushing blood. It wasn't long before I realized he was up to his hilt in my lung. I fall to the ground clutching the gash where a rib or two used to be.

My satchel chatters open as I desperately clamor for a a blood vial. My bloodstained fingers wrap around a familiar glass tube. I evacuate my hand and the contents as fast as possible. A blood vial, filled to the brim with coppery goodness. The fragile glass shatters against my upper thigh after I whip it down on me. The energy courses through my veins as I stand and re-adjust myself. A pitchfork seems to materialize in front of me. The man behind it yells something that I don't have time to make out. My mace slots itself between 2 of the twisted prongs. I'm able to wrench the fork from his hand and throw it into a nearby alleyway. His head makes a cracking noise as it makes contact with the coils.

As the mace collides with the head of a foe, I slip the coils down into the leather bag that I keep them in. The metal snaps into place as I unlatch the rapier from the heated iron. I slash upwards as I remove the weapon. The hot sword cuts deep in another pitchfork wielding foe. He stumbles backwards and dies of blood loss on the street.

With iron still hot, I pierce through another adversary and slice the blade out horizontally, massacring his liver. As the blade swipes out from where it was lodged, I manage to strike another local in the ribs with the edge of my sword. His lungs fill up with blood most likely and he stays done for good. I disembowel the man anyways as he tumbles. I take the now warm rapier and stab through the next villager's eye. He dies upon receiving his new lobotomy. 7 more of the militia it seems.

I take out the rapier and slash it against one of their throats' a few times. After the 4th time his head comes clean off and bobs down its merry way. A cutlass comes whizzing down at me. Before it strikes, I'm able to pull the trigger of my pistol and knock him down for a second. I wrestle my hand clean through his chest cavity and take him down. I slash the next two villager's throats with a couple of clean swipes. I become increasingly tired with every slice and stab. I give in and shoot the rest of them on the legs and toss my last molotov cocktail on the pile of writhing bodies.

"Good riddance.", I say now that my cockiness has room to breathe. The fact that I had to use a dirty vial of blood sickened me, although the blood does taste decadent. The wound in my right lung had made nearly a full recovery. The chip on my shoulder was neatly represented by a bit of skull that had found a home next to my neck. I wiped it off felt the adrenaline leave my system as I staggered down the now empty road.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Act II**_

My blood soaked boots made a wet slapping noise as I drunkenly trotted down the street. I get tired far too easily at the smallest encounters. My side wound has almost already closed entirely. Nothing left but a small crimson scratch. A mere nick in my rib cage. Eventually, m forehead finds itself buried in the cobblestone. My breath bubbles in the pool of someone's blood as my brain takes control of my inhales and exhales. I'm lucky I didn't acquire a new wrinkle in my hat or a new bruise on my face. It still hurt, though.

A screech pierces through the think veil of the evening. What is it? Could it be another filthy beast? With my vision impaired and my legs hindered, I was in no shape to fight. The screech is nothing like I've ever heard while hunting before. It was no ordinary beast. I hear a shuffling noise from the southeast of me. I spin on intoxicated heels and see a quick spurt of shadows rearrange and slip into darkness. I can't fight something that big in my confused state. My blurred vision could still tell the beast was large and had grown a few limbs too many. It had a long and slender head that came to a point. I ride the brick wall to my side and start hobbling as fast as possible.

The wall is nearly crumbling, and I hope it doesn't fall this day, right now. My knees buckled before the wall did, sadly. My ears pricked up at the sound of the beast nearing my back. I was all out of rope molotov cocktails, I'll just have to use a normal one. I swivel around as best as I could while kneeling on the ground. I poise my arm and throw the bottle with the rest of the energy left in my arm.

I hear the glass fracture closer than I thought it would. Not because I missed, but because the beast was right behind me. It sounded at least 50 feet away, but it looked more like 20, and it barely made the slightest noise. The bright flash of inferno catches on the fur along the creature's hind legs. Its legs were thick and wound up much like a frog's. It had 4 arms, all hairless, but the top 2 were much more muscle bound than the others. The lower left hand was balled into a fist, even though it was the farthest away from me. It wasn't winding up a punch or anything like that. What was it doing?

The beast let forth a long and continuous bellow and claws at the charring flesh. It climbs over a nearby building and scuttles away in an unnatural and strange crawl. It was finally gone, I could catch my breath from the previous fight. I let in and out long panting breaths. Unfortunately, there was no kind of blood that could heal tired muscles. I set down in an alcove between 2 buildings. My back props itself up against the cold brick and the fresh blood from the battle earlier drips down onto the stones.

I could hear the beast get farther and farther away with each scream. Probably still pissed from the new ashy mark on his thigh. He can go fuck with whatever hunter he wants, just not me. I reach down into my bag for something; for anything to help calm my nerves. A sedative might help for my shaking and tiredness. After I down the entire bottle, I realize that I was shaking because it was getting cold. The last thing I saw before my lights went out was my warm breath hitting the cold air and forming a thick cloud of white.

My tense body loosens as I slip into a comatose state, and all my troubles fade to black.

My eyes open with a start. I'm on a cobblestone street still, but now it's more grassed over. The moss taste strange. I lift myself from the vegetated ground and I shift my gaze ahead. A garden, or something similar. There were gravestones lined up on both sides of me. A limp and lifeless person lying on a bed of grass, ivy covers the wall behind her. A chapel like building stands on the high ground. I wasn't interested in this new place, I just want to go back to that nice little space for me to curl up and sleep. I walk up to a gravestone and see a few locations. All places I've been before oddly enough. I see the place I just was at, Downtown Yarnham. I touch my hand to the chiseled text and feel my body deteriorating. My body doesn't feel weight anymore and my hand becomes translucent.

A bright light shines into my eyes. I can't see anything but this light. Everything goes dark again. Why is everything black? It hits me just then that I'm back at the alcove I was in before, just my eyes aren't quite adjusted to the dark now that I've seen the brightly lit garden. All my things are still here. Nobody stole from me while I was sound asleep on a best of stone. I have to get moving, to continue venturing the lower streets of the decrepit city.


End file.
